Pickle at class. Photo: Claudia Civinini

Students interacting with therapy dogs Keanu & Janca during the „Tierische Sprechstunde“/Consultation Hour. © Felina Dinçer

Paws2Study

Animal-assisted programmes in universities are particularly widespread in the US, Canada and the UK, says Felina Dinçer, a Research Assistant and PhD candidate at the Department of Educational Science at the University of Regensburg in Germany.

“Most of the research I read is from those countries,” she adds.

At her institution, Dinçer started the dog-assisted programme Paws2Study with her supervisor, Professor Silke Schworm, in 2022.

A growing number of students were struggling with stress at university, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic, she explains. As she and her team were already researching animal-assisted interventions, they were aware of the benefits such programmes could bring.

The dogs, she explains, are all family dogs. The human-dog teams, which include student teams, are assessed and then trained. “We train new teams almost every year,” she explains. “And the dogs come in all sizes, small and big — we have purebreds as well as rescues.”

The programme offers two formats: the animal consultation programme, which allows a group of students to interact with the dogs, and one-on-one sessions.

Dinçer’s two rescue dogs, Lakota and Keanu, have taken part in the programme — although Lakota, 12, has now retired.

On one occasion, a student with severe social anxiety attended a one-on-one session, seeking support after her cat passed away.

Lakota had her back to the student, enjoying some cuddles. Once the student started crying, though, she turned around and put her paw on the student’s leg, Dinçer recalls. “This episode still moves me,” Dinçer says. “It just shows how sensitive dogs are.”

She adds that these programmes make it easier for students to access support, as seeking help for mental health issues can still be stigmatised.

“These programmes help break the stigma because they are informal – students can come to the break room and interact with the animals, and then they might go to the counselling services afterwards,” she says. “It’s a foot in the door.”

Robot dogs

Dinçer’s research focuses on stress reduction and wellbeing, particularly for higher education students. With a Master’s in Education Science and a passion for animal-assisted interventions, she readily accepted an offer to pursue a PhD in the field as the natural step forward.

She’s currently working on a research project investigating whether interactions with a real dog are more beneficial and lead to higher intervention acceptance than interactions with a robotic dog. The rationale for using a robot dog, Dinçer explains, was to have a control group — a group of students receiving a different intervention from the dog-assisted programme.

Preliminary results, she explains, show that real dogs increase wellbeing more significantly than their robotic counterparts.

In a qualitative study published in 2024, Dinçer and colleagues investigated which factors influenced the positive effects that dog therapy programmes can have on students.

The more interaction students had with dogs, the higher the benefits. Furthermore, those participants who didn’t have a dog at home showed the greatest increase in wellbeing.

The gold standard

More research investigating the effects of activities such as animal visitation programmes on stress reduction and prevention for university students is now available, but it wasn’t always the case, according to Dr Patricia Pendry.

Dr Pendry, a Professor of Human Development at Washington State University in the US, has conducted research on programmes with a range of animals — including horses, dogs and cats — seeking to provide evidence of their benefits.

“Ten to fifteen years ago, in my opinion, people way too enthusiastically embraced anything having to do with animals and started implementing programmes at universities and talking about them as if they were the best solution towards anything dealing with stress,” she explains.

“In those days, there was relatively little evidence. I felt it was necessary to bring traditional, gold-standard research methods to the field, because we were exaggerating the impacts without evidence — and that’s not something I approve of.”

Her interest in human-animal interaction is lifelong.

As a child, she enjoyed riding ponies. After she moved with her family from the Netherlands to Germany, she joined a local barn which had a policy that all newcomers should be buddies with a child with developmental disabilities for six months.

“I was paired with a girl with Down syndrome. For six months, we’d do little barn chores together — feeding the ponies, petting the goats, things like that — and we became friends,” she recalls.

“As an adult, I realised that that was an opportunity for this girl to experience some therapeutic effect of interacting with animals, and animals were kind of a facilitator to her social interactions, and to my perception of children who were different from myself.”

Later, as a researcher working on investigating the physiology underlying stress, that experience informed her thinking — and eventually pushed her to apply gold-standard research methodology, such as randomised controlled trials, to examining the effect of human-animal interactions on human and animal wellbeing, stress and behaviour.

In one study, she and her co-author looked at the effects of an animal visitation programme in which students interacted with dogs or cats for 10 minutes during the week they were preparing for final exams. The students’ cortisol levels were measured throughout the day and after the intervention. “We wanted to see if the programme actually reduced cortisol levels and, lo and behold, it did!” she says.

In another study, she and her co-author investigated animal-assisted programmes for incoming students, finding that they can have a protective effect against anxiety and stress.

“The trajectories we see with incoming students are not always positive. We see increases in perceived stress; we see students becoming a little bit less compassionate towards themselves; we see patterns of increasing depression,” she explains.

“But in the case where students participated more in these interventions, we saw a protective effect.”

Students interacting with therapy dog Romeo during the „Tierische Sprechstunde“/Consultation Hour. © Felina Dinçer

Paperwork

Programmes with animals are a hit in many universities.

Dr Scott Silverman, Dean, Noncredit and External Programmes, at Santa Monica College in the US and the President of the Board of Directors at a non-profit veterinary clinic, says that animal-assisted programmes are some of the most popular on campus.

“The smiles are infectious,” he says. Besides more traditional programmes with cats and dogs, he says, there are others now on the rise — such as petting zoos and goat yoga.

But these programmes are not easy to organise.

Dr Silverman recommends seeking the advice of colleagues from other institutions who have experience. He says that when choosing external partners, it’s important to look for companies or charities that have run those programmes before. “So you know you’ll get legal compliance done a little faster,” he says.

Dr Pendry recommends universities reach out to and work with organisations that have expertise in animal-assisted services, as there are some unique aspects to consider in the implementation of these programmes.

“If you don’t consider them, you increase the risk of transmission of zoonotic diseases, issues with safety, dog bites, etc. There are many issues that can be quite problematic for universities if programmes are not designed and implemented well,” she says.

It’s a two-way street with organisations running these programmes. When partnering with universities, Canine Concern in the UK asks for a donation. In return, beyond providing the stars of the show, the charity supplies legal documents such as health and safety and safeguarding policies, and covers volunteers and their dogs with liability insurance.

“There are risks associated with running these programmes without proper assessment and insurance,” agrees Fillery.

Canine Concern and many other interviewees also mention that choosing the right room is essential: it should be spacious enough, especially if there is more than one animal, and the floor should not be slippery.

Carpet, Harris at the University of Sussex comments, is not the best idea in case accidents happen.

“Looking at venues, it’s important to make sure that there are relevant risk assessments, and to check buildings in terms of accessibility,” she adds.

“It’s also really important to coordinate with cleaning teams and think about students with allergies.”

One health

The format of the programme can be adapted to suit the needs of the institution, but animals’ needs must be considered.

“For us, animal welfare is the top priority,” Dinçer says. Dogs need adequate rest, with enough free days between sessions and short slots to ensure that they don’t feel stressed.

“It’s really important that they can be removed from the session if they show any signs of discomfort or distress,” she adds.

And while Dr Pendry says there are many new research questions that need to be tackled in the field of animal-assisted therapy and programmes, her primary focus appears to be animal wellbeing: how can we conduct these programmes in a way that respects and protects the safety and wellbeing of animals? What kind of animal is most suitable? Do we need to train them? How can programmes scale up without harming the animals or using them as a tool?

“I would like people to be mindful that the animals are not tools. We need to change our language; we want to look at this as a bidirectional, very connected relationship – what we call one health,” she explains.

“This holistic view is what creates the best outcome for everyone.”

Pickle would agree.